Is Aaron Rodgers America’s most interesting athlete or its most annoying?

The Green Bay Packers quarterback offers a reconciliation of sorts for the rival camps of a sport torn between conservatives and progressives

QB1: Green Bay Packers main man, Aaron Rodgers.

In late July, as NFL players across the country were dragging their battered bodies back to pre-season camp, the Green Bay Packers posted a slow-motion video of Aaron Rodgers on social media. “Let’s do this,” the caption read, while the quarterback, dressed in a vest tucked into a pair of relaxed fit denim jeans, hair swept back, facial scruff untamed, strode purposefully across a parking lot. 

The clip was, of course, a tribute to Nicolas Cage’s performance in 1997 action classic Con Air. A few weeks later, Rodgers revealed that he had been sent a bust of Cage’s head. The bust now sits in Rodgers’s locker, next to his shoulder pads, calmly looking on as the NFL’s reigning MVP goes about the torrid business of trying to turn himself into a figure of cross-cultural significance.